I like to joke with my students, but I felt as though joking with this particular student would be like a match to a bonfire. “No!”, “Stop” and “Don’t” when repeated infinite times are really a downer. I had a chart in my studio with events like “Clap the rhythm using only your hands” or “Play your piece without kicking the piano”… all of the things you never ever thought you would say as a piano teacher when you first started out 🙂 Read each expectation to your student immediately before they are to begin that task.Ĥ) Be Fun! Part of the reason I dreaded my Tuesday afternoons was that I can’t stand being a kill-joy. Be very specific and make a visual representation of what will happen. While you’re working hard in the background to adapt your teaching style, your student also needs to hold up his end of the bargain. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t shift focus away from his or her book, but rather as you change activities, ensure they are still working towards your set plan.ģ) Be clear with your expectations. Every single part of the lesson should be carefully crafted to meet this goal. If your goal is to have your student be able to play the first two lines of their piece hands together than don’t deviate from that. Being willing to be flexible on both accounts will save your sanity.Ģ) Don’t change focus. This means you will need to seriously adjust how you give information and your expectations for how much you can accomplish in a typical piano lesson. 2 minutes is spent “teaching” and the other 2 is spent having your student demonstrate their understanding. How do you possibly teach anything in 4 minutes? Very carefully! Choose only one goal per lesson and find 8 ways of teaching this goal. In a 30 minute lesson, this means that each activity lasts approximately 4 minutes give or take. 4 Ways To Teach Piano To Students With Uber-Short Attention Spansġ) Divide your lesson into at least 8 parts.
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If you too have a 30 minutes of “how will I get through this?!” in your scheduled teaching time, check out my 4 tips for how to teach piano to the busiest of kids. My Tuesdays drastically improved from that moment on. It was as though he actually heard me for the very first time.
The first lesson I taught in this manner he actually stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me with his melt-your-heart brown eyes. I broke my 30 minutes of crazy into 8 (yes 8!) segments that were carefully crafted to keep him humming through the lesson with no chance for antics… or curtain climbing. So, over the next two weeks I spent my Sundays planning instead of fretting. It had to be option 2 as, at that time, I was in no position to be choosy. I had two options: 1) Drop him as a student or 2) Deal with it. Something had to change… and that something had to be me. Teaching Piano to Kids Who Just Can’t Sit Still…Your Two Choices It was, without a doubt, the most frustrating 30 minutes of my life. To say he had absolutely nothing resembling an attention span would be closer to the truth. To say he had a short attention span would be kind. I had exactly eighty-four seconds before I had to somehow wrangle him away from the window… or away from my bookcase… or off of the floor.
Eighty-four seconds was his magic number.
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